Artificial Intelligence and Automatic Control

The book is based on papers that I presented to conferences on Intelligence and Cognitive Systems, Intelligent Control, and Intelligent Automatic Control Systems.. The evolution of control systems is the main theme. Machines first took over from humans to replace muscle power, next to replace machine-minding and currently to replace human decision making. With the advent of intelligent machines, not only are tasks being performed by machines but, increasingly, machines are deciding what tasks should be performed. Systems that can learn are already with us and it is interesting to speculate about where this is leading Society. In considering where the ultimate boundaries between Man and Machine lie; it is useful to probe some of Nature’s workings, as well as Man’s deeper behaviours; therefore many diverse topics are involved. The book retains the ‘slide plus text’ style of the original conference presentations, with the intention of maximising readability.